


The Beekeeper's Heart

by Ellipsical



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Beekeeping, Coming Out, Families of Choice, Introspection, M/M, Not compliant with any season, Queer families of choice, Re-evaluating success, Sherlock Asks For Help, Transgender Child, Vulnerability is the actual worst, also, failure - Freeform, the solution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2019-10-21 00:43:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17632868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: A story about growing up.





	1. Part One: Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lawyer_margo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawyer_margo/gifts).



> Dedicated to the best friend I've ever had, and who fandom gifted me. Thank you for being a miracle, Margo. I love you, my friend.

Sherlock woke just as the dawn began to spread its periwinkle light over the ceiling above him.

He lay still and watched the colour change subtly as the minutes ticked by until the blue had faded to a pale rosy peach and then finally was subsumed by the clear gossamer light of day, signaling it was time to rise. The pair of gray collared doves nesting in the eaves outside his windows agreed and began to coo to each other softly. It was a sound Sherlock had woken to often over the summer. They would be gone soon, migrating to warmer climes. The thought struck Sherlock as a bit sad. He’d rather grown accustomed to their companionship. Mornings would be quiet without them.

The air on his cheeks was sharp and cold and making his nose run slightly. Sherlock tucked his quilt under his chin and yearned to stay burrowed in his warm nook in bed. He spread his toes wide beneath the quilt and stretched, spine popping, achilles pulling taut, shoulders rolling forward and back, arms reaching up, hands tangling with the bed posts. A long, low moan of pleasure escaped him, rumbling out into the stillness of the room. He enjoyed the sensation of his body waking up, felt his nerves spark, his mind slowly coming online. Allowing himself a few more minutes of warmth and comfort before he would have to make the trek to the loo across the bare artic floor, he turned onto his side and hugged his pillow to his chest, surveying the view of his backyard out the three windows that lined the northern wall of his bedroom.

Mist shrouded the ground, hiding all but the rooftop peak of his honey shed in the distance. The seasons seemed to have changed almost overnight, a coolness seeping in through the window sashes and lodging in the floorboards. They chilled the soles of his feet as he finally made his way to the bathroom, prickling his skin up in goosebumps, and rocking him up onto his tiptoes as he first encountered the icy tiles.

He waited, shivering, for the shower to heat up, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing his hands up and down his arms, before stepping beneath the blissfully hot spray.

Head tucked into his chest, letting the water run down his body, skin stinging as the blood was brought rushing back to the surface, Sherlock thought about the day ahead.

If autumn was finally here that meant that the bee’s year was coming to an end. September fading into October, the days were growing shorter and the weather cooler. Michaelmas had just passed, with the equinox not far behind it, and the purple asters that Sherlock had planted two years before were in bloom, along with the goldenrod and ivy, providing the last major nectar flow for his bees who would be shoring up their stores of honey for the winter. It was time for Sherlock to help them batten down and ready them for the cold months ahead.

Sherlock had thirty hives in total, spread across the town. Today he would drive out to Cloversweet Hill, Ellen and Zoe Edicott’s farm, and visit the hives he kept there. He would have to check his journal beforehand, but he knew off the top of his head that three of the ten hives needed fresh base boards, one a new telescoping cover, and one or two were in need of sugar syrup supplementing. He would also need to check the hives for mite levels and, if necessary, treat them all with a dose of thymol. Sherlock also made a mental note to bring a case of honey with him, part of the rent he paid to keep his bees on the Edicott’s property and for the use of their farm’s name on his honey bottles. Sherlock liked Ellen and Zoe more than most other humans. Ellen was a tall red-headed woman with an even temperament and a level head. She was also teaching herself to play chess, which was a mark of fine character and intelligence in Sherlock’s book. Zoe was much like her wife, quiet and calm, but shorter, with a head of close-cropped chestnut curls, a dry sense of humour, and a big infectious laugh. She was the mechanic in the family and Sherlock often consulted her help on engineering matters. Their teenage daughter, Hayley, helped Sherlock with the honey harvest during the summer and had made him grudgingly adjust his assessment of teenagers as a lazy vapid lot, by being a bright, responsible young woman who did not balk at hard work.

It seemed to be a central theme of this period of his life: old assumptions being proven wrong and needing to change perspective. Logically it should be a simple thing; to change. It was the one constant of the universe. And yet…

Sherlock, disrupting that maudlin line of thinking by reminding himself of the promise of the visit with Ellen and Zoe, shaved and dressed and headed downstairs to put the coffee on.

While it brewed, he pulled on his boots and a thick wool sweater and headed out to the far back corner where his hives sat in the shade of a stand of beech trees. On his way up the hill he checked on the border of witch hazel and lilac he had planted which were now waist high, and ran his fingertips along the leaves of the fruit tree saplings he had planted behind the shed. The beech leaves were just starting to turn gold and fall. Piles were beginning to accumulate around the cerulean blue hive boxes. Sherlock pulled the rake out of the lean-to where he kept his gardening equipment and set to clearing the area. Bees flew up to inspect him as he worked, but Sherlock moved in sure, slow motions, so as not to trigger their alarm, and, growing bored, they let him be. They worked happily alongside each other for ten minutes as the sun continued to climb the sky. The mist dissipated and the sweet scent of dew-wet grass, mixed with the rich earthy smells of mulch and loam, filled the air. Forager bees were returning to the hive entrances, flying low, their bodies heavily laden with pollen. Sherlock could see them among the asters across the lawn, alighting industriously on the purple blossoms.

Just as Sherlock was putting away the rake, a ginger cat slipped out of the woods and sat in the grass nearby, tail twitching, watching him with round green eyes.

Sherlock glanced up at the house next door, just visible through the beech grove. New neighbours had moved in at the end of August, but Sherlock wasn’t the type to go out of his way to greet them, so what he knew had come in glimpses over the last few weeks. There was a young girl, gangly and blond and thin, and a man, a little older than Sherlock with fair, silvering hair. An older woman lived with them, but kept mostly to the house. Sherlock saw her sometimes in the morning standing at her bedroom window, her hair a loose white cloud around her face.

Not seeing any of the other inhabitants stirring, Sherlock squatted down and made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, his hand held out in invitation.

The cat regarded him for a moment and then turned his attention to his paw, dragging his pink tongue over his fur, as if Sherlock didn’t exist.

“Carrot!” The shout startled Sherlock, who hadn’t heard the girl approaching, and he nearly fell backwards in the mud, saving himself at the last moment with an out-flung hand.

“Bugger,” Sherlock muttered, pushing himself up to standing and wiping his mud caked fingers off on his trousers.

“Oh!” The girl exclaimed when she saw Sherlock, coming around the far side of the honey shed and skidding to a halt. She was dressed for school, in navy pinafore and tights with a white collared shirt and yellow cardigan. Her cheeks flushed a bright red and her hands knit into fists at her sides, tugging on the hem of her jumper nervously. “Sorry,” she said, not meeting his eyes. She gestured at the cat who was now twining himself around her ankles in a mewling figure eight. Bits of dirt and twig detached themselves from her matching yellow wellies and caught on his fur. “I was just coming to get Carrot. He ran out when I opened the door to get my boots.”

Bending down she picked the orange cat up and brought him to her chest. He meowed in greeting and butted his head against her face, rubbing himself aggressively underneath her chin. It made her smile, toothy and wide, but she caught herself when her eyes met his and she looked down. “I’m sorry we bothered you,” she said, turning to go.

But an idea suddenly occurred to Sherlock. “Has he had any practice catching mice?” he asked, before she could leave.

The girl turned and blinked at him, her short white-blonde hair falling in her eyes. It was cut only a little longer than a boy’s, just brushing the lobes of her ears. A small pink barrette shone out from between the strands, doing a poor job of holding back her fringe.

“They bother the bees,” Sherlock explained, nodding towards the hives.

“Really? Don’t they get stung?” she asked, turning to face the line of bright blue boxes.

Sherlock shook his head. “During the winter, the bees get sluggish. They’re using all their energy to keep warm. Mice break in and make their nests inside the hive during the winter when the bees can’t fight them off.”

The girl nodded as if this made sense, looking at the hives with new interest and a piqued curiosity. Most children would have shied away from the bees, taught to fear them by skittish adults, but she didn’t retreat, just watched them fly about with a pair of big brown eyes. Sherlock wondered how old she was. She stroked Carrot’s fur, her fingers sinking into the sleek coat. Sherlock could hear the deep contented purr from where he stood a few feet away.

“Charlie!” A man’s voice boomed suddenly through the woods, stern and edged with panic. “Charlie!”

“That’s my dad,” the girl said, eyes widening.

“CHARLOTTE WATSON, YOU ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW!” Full fledged panic now.

Dropping Carrot onto the ground unceremoniously she turned and shouted, “Dad, I’m here! Carrot ran away!”

“Bus’ll be here any minute!” The panic was gone, replaced now with exasperation. Sherlock could hear him a little ways off, making a racket through the undergrowth.

“Carrot’s welcome over here anytime,” Sherlock said as the girl and the cat both darted towards the beeches.

“I’ll tell my dad!” she called over her shoulder. And in a flash of navy and yellow, she was off.


	2. Chapter Two

Sherlock returned to the house and sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a slice of buttered toast. He added sugar to his mug and a drizzle of honey to his toast as he perused the front page of The Sussex Gazette. Sussex was sleepy compared to London, almost comatose, in fact, but it was a habit Sherlock had found hard to break since moving to Fulworth.His eyes skimmed over the announcements for the county’s myriad theatre groups’ latest offerings, the columns highlighting the area schools’ sports accomplishments, ads for local vendors, and upcoming dates for bookclubs, knitting circles, farmers markets, and charity fundraisers. He reminded himself to speak with Ellen about securing tables at the East Sussex farmers markets. They had shared a table to sell their goods together in the past and it had been successful. Cloversweet Hill had garnered some local renown for quality products, especially Ellen and Zoe’s artisanal cheeses and Sherlock’s honey and comb, and had been featured in the Gazette as a company to look out for the previous spring.

The last section he read, more closely than the others, was the personals section at the back. He had often found interesting cases from trawling their depths in his previous life and, while that hadn’t proven fruitful recently, he still parsed them carefully each week. Finding nothing of interest, he felt a now familiar stab of disappointment and loss. Some days were harder than others to accept the demise of his old profession and identity. He closed his eyes for a moment and consoled himself with the reminder that his worth wasn’t tied up in The Work anymore and that that old life had done more harm to those he loved than good and that it had almost killed him, multiple times.

His mind rebelled against him. Remembering the thrill of the chase and the challenge to his mind as he solved the trickiest of problems. A flush of heat climbed up his neck to burn in his cheeks. _Now what are you?_ he sneered at himself _. A beekeeper who spends his days doing useless… Stop_ , he thought, before he could continue down that spiral. He repeated to himself that this life that he was building now was just a new chapter, one rife with possibility. One without villains to match wits, near-constant danger, and the highs and lows of addiction. _Change_ , he thought again; not without bitterness, not without gratitude, not without hope, and not without fear. He was learning to live with the paradox of being present and intentional with his thinking while acknowledging the unruly complexity of his emotions. His therapist, he thought wryly, conjuring Tim’s bearded face from rehab, would be proud.

Clearing his mug and plate to the sink and adding them to the small pile of last night’s dinner dishes, which he would (probably) wash later, Sherlock poured the remainder of the coffee pot into his thermos, added a few scoops of sugar, and packed a cheese sandwich and an apple for lunch.

The temperature had already risen a few degrees celsius by the time he went back outside. His fleece vest and flannel shirt would be enough to resist what chill still lingered. After placing his satchel containing his lunch, water bottle, last year’s bee journal in addition to a fresh one, pens, a copy of Langstroth’s _The Hive and the Honeybee_ , and a bag of roasted cashews for snacking, into the front seat of his Range Rover, Sherlock headed to the honey shed to retrieve his equipment.

After having consulted his journal one more time, he grabbed fresh cypress-wood baseboards, his bee smoker and a ball of baling twine and newspaper for tinder, matches, and a large container of sugar syrup that he had mixed up yesterday. He added to this a few new covers, his frame grips, a pry bar, a small upholstery hammer, a bag of nails, and his bee suit. He double checked that the metal lock-box in the corner of his trunk had enough medication to dose all ten hives if necessary and enough alcohol to complete a bee wash to check infestation levels. Varoa mites were the biggest threat to his colonies right now and had carried off nearly half of his hives in his first year of beekeeping. The last thing he added were ten large concrete bricks he would use to ensure that the covers stayed in place over the winter.

He kept his windows rolled down for the drive over to Ellen and Zoe’s, letting the mineral tang of the salt breeze from the nearby sea prickle the inside of his nose and stream through his fingers in a cool, tingling rush. The hills were still carpeted in a lush green, interspersed with fields sporting large ochre-hued wheels of mown hay, the trees caught in mid-metamorphosis: leaves of gold, persimmon, crimson, and lime all mixing together in a kaleidoscope of colour. Fall was Sherlock’s favourite time of year and he savoured every minute.

When Sherlock turned onto the dirt road that led to Cloversweet Hill, he drove past the house where his friends lived and headed up the hill onto a rutted dirt track that sidled along the outskirts of the cow pasture before ending at the far reaches of the Edicott property where the eponymous hill levelled off for a few miles in a thick oak and birch forest. Sherlock’s hives sat in a row facing the southeast, situated on the edge of a wild, verdant meadow which ran riot with clover and wild flowers in the summer. When he got out of the car Sherlock walked over to the paddock fence to greet Abigail and Isabel, the two dairy cows who were meandering over to greet him. Sherlock fished out two small apples he had stuck in his pocket for them before leaving his house and let each one of them lip it from the centre of his outstretched palm. Abigail was a magnificent, headstrong Ayrshire with a beautiful copper and white coat. Isabel was a sweet russet coloured Jersey. On the other side of the field Sherlock could see Buttermilk, the large white long-horn, chewing on grass and steadfastly ignoring them in her typical supercilious manner. The goats, Topples and Kit, knickered loudly from the barn. Abigail, satisfied that he had no more gifts, left quickly to investigate a nearby tuft of grass. Isabel, however, allowed Sherlock to pet the soft white diamond on her forehead for a bit before following after her friend.

Alerted by the goats nattering, Sherlock saw the door to the farmhouse open and Zoe come out onto the back porch. She waved to him and he waved back, before turning to open the trunk of his car, planning to suit up while she made her way up the drive to join him.

He had zipped himself into his bee suit and was tucking the ankles into his work boots and tying them up when Zoe crested the hill.

“Hello, Blue, how’s it going?” she said, calling him by the moniker he’d earned from his signature blue hives. It had been coined by Zoe herself, a woman given to nicknaming everyone in an affectionate, teasing way that somehow encouraged the person who’d received it to wear it with pride. The bright autumn sunlight caught in her curls and forged them a deep mahogany with red and silver streaked throughout. She was dressed in an oversized green checked flannel shirt and jeans. Her sleeves were rolled up to reveal powerful forearms and there was a dark wet splotch near her stomach. Sherlock wondered if she had been milking the goats not long before he’d arrived.

“Fall’s finally here,” Sherlock said, conversationally, and as the words were leaving his mouth, he was gripped by vertigo, a quick punch to his solar plexus and a high dive down to the pit of his stomach: discussing the weather inanely with a friend (a friend!) would never have been something he would have even considered in the past. The force of the change in his circumstance sometimes still took his breath away. 

“I wondered when you’d show up to winter the bees. Ellie was just saying yesterday that you’d stop by soon.”

“Where is Ellen?” Ellen was typically the one who kept him company while he worked.

“She’s laid up in bed,” Zoe said, resting her hands on her hips as she finally reached the car. “Migraine,” she explained, tapping her temple, when Sherlock looked at her with concern.

“I’m sorry.”

“I keep telling her to make an appointment with the doctor. She’s been getting them more regularly lately. But you know Ellen,” Zoe finished with a sigh. Sherlock nodded. He did know Ellen and she was stubborn and self-sufficient as they came. “Anyway, can I help with anything? Hayley’s already driven to school.”

“I’m just replacing some baseboards and doing a mite test. Need to weigh the hives and give the lite ones syrup. Check to see if any are thinking of swarming. Nothing too hard today.”

Zoe nodded, shading her hazel eyes with her hand to look up at him. “All right, well come on down to the house when you’re done. I’ll make you some lunch.”

“Oh, I brought—“ Sherlock started to protest, not wanting to impose, but Zoe cut him off.

“I’ve got some cheese and things for you to take with you anyway. Labels came in last week and I made up a box for you the other night. We need to talk about the market schedule too. Might as well join me for tea, yes?”

Sherlock smiled. “Yes. I’m sure I owe you money too. We can settle accounts.”

“Great. See you in a bit then.”

“Hey, Zoe,” Sherlock called, catching her before she’d disappeared down the other side of the road. “Do you have anymore twine? I’m running low and need it for the smoker.”

Zoe nodded. “Sure. I’ll add it to the box.”

“Thanks,” Sherlock said, turning back to the trunk and taking out his bee veil.

Zipping it onto the collar of his suit, he grabbed the smoker and added a rolled-up piece of newspaper into the vessel and lit it with a match. Once it had caught Sherlock stuffed a wad of baling twine inside, which he scavenged from Ellen and Zoe or other farmers who used bales of hay to feed their farm animals. He set it down and let it smoulder while he retrieved his tools. Going around to the front he fetched his new journal and a pen and stuck it in his pocket. Walking back to the trunk Sherlock pulled out the cypress boards and walked them over to the hives so that he would have them ready. His bees came to say hello, alighting on his suit and flying about his head.

“Hello, my darlings,” he murmured, standing still to greet and soothe them after he had set down the wooden planks. “How are we today?”

A quick warning sting to the back of his neck made him chuckle.

“Ah, a bit restive, hmm?” He noticed that the bees _were_ a bit listless, flying around in a desultory manner, which might mean that the nectar flow had ended slightly early here or hadn’t yet begun. That was unusual, but if beekeeping had taught him anything over the past two years it had been that you could never truly predict what would happen year to year. He wasn’t too worried about these hives. The abundant summer clover gathering had meant that these hives had built up good stores and filled many supers of honey for him. However, it increased the likelihood of swarms or robbing if they grew bored before the temperature dropped.

He walked slowly back to the car and took out the tools he would need to pry open the tops of the hives. Bees glued their hives together with propolis, a substance made from saliva, wax, and plant resins, to keep out moisture and the cold. He would also need his frame grips to pull out the frames inside the hive body to check the bees’ winter stores of honey, as well as the brood chamber where the queen laid her eggs and where larvae pupated. While he had the hives open he would check for evidence of wax moths, cockroaches or robber bees. Weak hives would need to be combined with a stronger one. Too full hives would need to be split if he thought they might be able to build up enough stores in time. Basically he was looking for any sign that the hive needed help before they closed up for the winter.

Carrying the smoker in front of him, Sherlock puffed one silky, pearl-gray stream inside the entrance of the first hive and then waited a minute for the smoke to take effect before slipping the pry bar beneath the left corner of the box and levering it up.

“All right, beauties, let’s see what’s going on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Quick Heads Up: I had originally marked this as rated as teen and up. While most of the story will be appropriate for that level, the story will become explicit later on and stay explicit after that. I polled some readers/writers on Twitter and it seemed that the most respectful thing to do would be to mark this explicit from the beginning instead of changing the rating later on. I've decided to do that. The tags will be the way you can know when the story changes. I add them each time I post a new chapter so if you want to continue reading up until it gets explicit, check the tags! Thanks <3
> 
> -A note about research: I am not a beekeeper but I have been reading A LOT about it. If you are a beekeeper and notice a glaring inaccuracy in what I'm describing please feel free to reach out to me through email: ellipsicalelle@gmail.com.  
> -My primary sources of information are: A Book of Bees, by Sue Hubbell, Michael Bush's website: bushfarms.com, and a local Sussex beekeeper's association: chalfontsbeekeepers.co.uk 
> 
> -One last thing. This story is a catharsis for me. It's going to be about what I'm working through in my life right now: recovering from depression, learning to be more intentional with negative thinking, navigating adulthood in a less reactionary way, as well as what I'm going through as a parent. This Sherlock might seem OOC to you. That's absolutely valid. I'd invite you to exercise your right to not read further. Thanks!
> 
> -And as always, I'm grateful for any and all support and deeply appreciate comments. I also know not everyone is this type of reader, so: thank you for reading, in any way, shape or form. <3


	3. Chapter Three

Sherlock didn’t return home until sunset and when he pulled into the drive, backing his car up to the honey shed’s doors, he was dirty, demoralised, and furious.

He parked and looked down at his soot stained hands, still reeling from the shock of the day’s work.

All ten hives were gone.

All of them had had evidence of American Foulbrood except for one and the inspector that Sherlock had been required by law to call in had confirmed that he would need to burn that last hive too as a precaution.

He sat in the cab of the Range Rover long after he had turned off the engine, hollowed out. Grief and rage vied for prominence inside him, making his skin hot and clammy, his breathing shaky and shallow. He stared down at the black rings beneath his fingernails. He reeked of petrol and woodsmoke and sweat. Failure hung in a thick fugue about him, clouding his thoughts.

It wasn’t fair.

He had done everything right. He had followed the rules. He had followed the schedules, the suggestions, the local wisdom. He had taken precautions.

And none of it had mattered.

He let his head fall forward until his forehead was pressed into the top of the steering wheel. He leaned in until it hurt, until the pain was intense and bright and shooting down his spine, and then jerked back, the back of his head bouncing off the head rest. He wanted a hit, that’s what he wanted. Of nicotine, of cocaine, of alcohol. Anything to blunt this terrible feeling of despair knotting inside him. Everything he used to think about the world seemed confirmed in this one apocalyptic day’s events.

What was the point of caring?

What was the point of trying?

If there were no guarantees, if there was this much pain and disappointment possible, what was the point in any of it?

He could turn the key and be at the liquor shop in under ten minutes. He could have cigarettes and vodka. He could make this whole day disappear.

Sherlock wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and shook the car, screaming until he was hoarse. Until his throat burned and the breath in his lungs ran out. He screamed and he shook his car until it bled out of him. The energy to seek out tools for numbing his life away ebbing as he eventually fell back into his seat exhausted, tears running down his cheeks, his blackened hands aching, his heart pounding wildly against his ribs.

He took out his phone and tapped out the text before he could talk himself out of it.

_I want to use._

The dots appeared below his words almost immediately. His sponsor was nothing if not reliable.

_Ok. What happened?_

Sherlock grit his teeth; the urge to obfuscate, to be vague, to lessen the impact of the loss by downplaying it, overwhelming him.

_I lost a third of my bees today. I had to wait until dark and then kill them with petrol. I had to burn all of my hives._

Tears ran quicker, cutting cool tracks down the feverish skin of his cheeks. There were blisters on his palms from having to dig a hole big enough to hold all of his hives. He wanted to make fists so tight they would burst. When he closed his eyes he could still see the flames against the black sky.

_Oh, S, I’m so sorry. That’s devastating._

_They were sick. I didn’t have a choice._

_You must feel so overwhelmed right now. Is there anyone who can come be with you?_

_No. I’m alone._

_What about another beekeeper? Someone who would understand what you went through today._

_Everyone is at home with their families. I don’t want to bother them._

_Ok. I get that. But it might be more important to bother them than to be alone tonight. What do you think?_

_It would be easier if I could just handle this myself._

_I know it would. But we don’t have good track records with that, do we? Remember when I had to put Penny down? I wanted to be alone, but you made me call my sister._

Sherlock didn’t answer.

_What about those ladies you sell your honey with? The farm wives?_

_I just left them. They asked me to stay over, but one wasn’t feeling well so I left._

_Could you call them back? Sleep on their couch?_

Sherlock didn’t respond. He was feeling despondent and embarrassed that he couldn’t do this on his own. He imagined how good it would feel for everything he was feeling right now to disappear. He imagined the way his thoughts would blur, the way his body would become borderless, the way the emotions would simply fade away. It felt like blissful obliteration was within reach and yet he was somehow not reaching for it. He was instead actively seeking someone to block him from finding relief. It was the simplest solution to every single one of his problems. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

_What about a neighbour?_

Sherlock laughed derisively. Sometimes it was like Chrissy didn’t know him at all.

_All right you’re not answering me and that’s worrying me. I can be on the next train out. Can you stay sober long enough to pick me up at the station?_

_Don’t do that. It’s not necessary._

_It clearly is._

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, shame burning in his chest. He was pathetic. But he needed to figure something out before Chrissy spent time and money coming to save him. Humiliation was not something he wanted to add to the conflagration he was already dealing with.

_I’ll call someone._

_Great. Who?_

Sherlock considered lying to her. Giving her what she needed to leave him alone. The urge to use was so strong, it almost overpowered him.

_Ellen and Zoe. The farm wives._

_Ok. Call me when you get there. I want to talk to one of them. If I don’t hear from you within the hour I’m coming out there._

_Why is me staying sober more important to you than it is to me? You have work in the morning. You’re overreacting. This is ridiculous._

_You’re worth it._

_Chrissy._

_Being vulnerable is the worst. I get it. You feel exposed and weak and you want to make it go away. I’ve been there and I hated every fucking second of having to ask for help. But Sherlock none of us can do this alone. It’s thinking that we do that just starts up the cycle again and isolates us. I’m here for you. I care about you. I’m incredibly proud of you for texting me before you did something reckless. That took courage. You can get through tonight if you ask for just a little more help. You can do it, Sherlock. Text them now. I’ll wait to hear back from you._

Sherlock held his phone cradled in his hand for five full minutes before he could bring himself to do it. Finally he swallowed around the bile in his throat and sent the text.

_Zoe, I’m having a harder time than I thought. Does the offer of your li-low still stand?_

Almost immediately:

_Yes, of course. Please come._

Sherlock blinked through a fresh rush of tears and turned the key in the ignition, typing out one last text before he tossed his phone down onto the seat beside him.

_They said yes. I’m heading over now. I’ll have Zoe call you when I get there._

He didn’t read what Chrissy had written until he was locked inside Ellen and Zoe’s downstairs bathroom waiting for the shower to warm up, the sound of Hayley pumping the air mattress up filtering through the door. He could still feel the imprint of Zoe's arms around him, hugging him tight, as he read Chrissy's words.

_I’m so bloody proud of you. You’re amazing. I knew you could do it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taken from Wikipedia: American foulbrood is caused by the spore-forming bacteria Paenibacillus larvae and is a highly infectious bee disease. It is the most widespread and destructive of the bee brood diseases.
> 
> When cleaning infected cells, bees distribute spores throughout the entire colony. Disease spreads rapidly throughout the hive as the bees, attempting to remove the spore-laden dead larvae, contaminate brood food. Nectar stored in contaminated cells will contain spores and soon the brood chamber becomes filled with contaminated honey. As this honey is moved up into the supers, the entire hive becomes contaminated with spores. When the colony becomes weak from AFB infection, robber bees may enter and take contaminated honey back to their hives thereby spreading the disease to other colonies and apiaries. Beekeepers also may spread disease by moving equipment (frames or supers) from contaminated hives to healthy ones.
> 
> American foulbrood spores are extremely resistant to desiccation and can remain viable for more than 40 years in honey and beekeeping equipment. Therefore, honey from an unknown source should never be used as bee feed, and used beekeeping equipment should be assumed contaminated unless known to be otherwise.


	4. Chapter Four

Sherlock woke to a thick, dull pain pressing behind his eyes.

Could you get a hangover from emotions?

It seemed a monumental injustice if so.

He lay there for a second on the sagging air mattress, the air below him uncomfortably cold. His body hovered just above the hardwood floor, air seeping out through some unknown hole. He was afraid to disturb the delicate balance of the thing, which felt much like a waterbed, ready to send him toppling to the floor at any moment.

Hayley had left for school some indeterminate time earlier. Sherlock had woken to the front door clicking in its jamb just before burying his face in his pillow and falling back asleep. Now the sun was shining fully through the bay window above him. Ten tons of pellucid autumn light poured down on him and made him wince. He needed paracetamol and coffee before he could fully appreciate the day’s beauty.

 _Appreciate it now_ , came a voice inside him.

Sherlock didn’t want to listen to that voice. He wanted to be allowed to lick his wounds a bit. He had earned that much, hadn’t he? Sticking his arm out from under the comforter he fished about on the ground until he managed to grab his phone. It was dead.

He let it drop back down onto the floor with a clatter just as the door to the kitchen opened on the other side of the wall and the click-clack of toenails on lino heralded the impending arrival of Quinn, the Edicott’s Yorkshire terrier, who leapt straight up onto the li-low to greet Sherlock with her tongue lapping wildly at his face.

Sherlock grappled with the wiggling black-and-gold piebald body as Quinn continued to lick him enthusiastically, her tongue managing to somehow enter almost every orifice on his face except for his eyes, which he kept squeezed shut against her attempts.

He heard a chuckle come from the direction of the doorway.

“Help!” he gasped, when he thought it was safe.

It wasn’t.

“Arrrgh,” he moaned, scrubbing frantically at his lips with the back of his hand, all while trying to push Quinn off his chest with the other.

“Quinny loves to give you a nice French kiss when you wake up. It’s tradition. Far be it from me to deny her.”

“Ellen!”

Quinn was going for his left ear now.

“Quinn!”

The body stopped moving immediately, her tiny head whipping around to look expectantly at her master, ears perked.

“Come here.” Ellen slapped the side of her thigh.

Quinn merely cocked her head. Interested, but not convinced.

“Who wants a treat?” Ellen said, her voice going up an octave and turning treacly sweet.

Quinn immediately pushed off Sherlock, her hind feet effectively punching him in the stomach, which caused him to double up on his side in pain, which, inevitably, upset the delicate balance of the air mattress and sent him rolling onto the floor.

“Jesus buggering Christ,” he mumbled into the rug, nose smashed into the dog hair which had collected in its fibres.

“There’s coffee and toast when you’re up,” Ellen called from the kitchen, unaware of Sherlock’s predicament.

Sherlock lay there for a minute, pondering canine murder, utterly defeated by life.

 _Appreciate it_ , came the voice again.

“Oh, will you shut up?” he muttered, peeling himself off the cold floor.

When Sherlock entered the kitchen there was a plate of hot buttered toast lathered in a thick layer of blackberry preserves. Ellen stood at the hob pouring him a cup of coffee, her mouth twitching at the corners when she caught sight of him.

“Quinn did a number on you,” she said, heroically managing to contain her laughter at his disheveled appearance, coming forward to place the steaming mug beside his plate. Sherlock, shooting a quick withering glare at the dog who was happily chewing on what looked like a strip of beef jerky on her dog bed in the corner, pulled out the chair and collapsed into it.

Ellen settled into the seat across from him, pouring a splash of cream into her own mug. Sherlock watched her, her familiar face—close spaced brown eyes, freckled cheeks, her orange-red hair cut in a pixie—looking back at him with sympathy.

“You need to call the doctor,” Sherlock said, his voice coming out hoarse and crackly, tearing his eyes away from hers. He couldn’t stand the pity there. It made him think of the night before and it was unbearable.

Ellen leaned back in her seat, her eyebrows raised.

“Is that really what you want to talk about?”

“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Zoe. And Hayley.”

“It’s a few headaches,” Ellen scoffed. “She’s overreacting—“

“They knock you out for a full day,” Sherlock countered, spooning sugar into his mug and assiduously ignoring her gaze.

“Are we going to talk about—“

“No.”

“Oh, but you want me to talk about my headaches.”

“Yes, because you’re alive and can be helped and they can’t.”

The kitchen fell silent after this outburst. Bitterness seemed to leak out of every pore on his body. He brimmed with vitriol. He wanted to break something. Tears bit at the backs of his eyes, stinging.

“Sherlock—“

“No!”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock shut his eyes against her.

“The worst possible thing happened.”

Sherlock shook his head.

Ellen pressed on. “The worst possible thing happened and all you can think of is what you could have done differently to save them.”

Sherlock wrapped his hands around the edge of the table, trying to ground himself. Flames licked up the inside of his eyelids, climbing the star-pricked sky.

“You think it was your fault.”

Sherlock nodded, feeling immense relief at these words. A confirmation of every thought he had had since he’d opened the hives and found the tell-tale white mold capping the brood chambers.

“You tried to do everything you could, but you feel like you still failed them.”

 _I know!_ he wanted to shout at her, but he dug his fingernails into the table top instead, his heart shoved up into his windpipe, choking off air and speech.

“You won’t have much honey to sell next summer. The whole county will hear about how your hives got infected. You have to start over from scratch and build a whole new set of hives, start nucs of new bees. You’ll have to get them strong enough to survive through next winter. And there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again. They might get mites this time. Mice might get them. Moths. They might starve. You might fail again.”

The words echoed all of the thoughts Sherlock had been hurling at himself. Stoning himself out of guilt, out of desperation, out of an instinct to distract from the pain.

“You could give up. You could sell the rest of your hives.”

The corner of one of Sherlock’s fingernails cracked under the strain, sending a slice of pain cutting up his arm. He only dug them into the wood harder.

“No one would blame you for cutting your losses. You could admit defeat and take up…I don’t know, something equally eccentric, like…raising chickens.” He could hear her smile and it made something unclench inside him. “This could be it. You say the word and it all ends right here.”

Sherlock released his grip on the table.

His heart dislodged and melted back down into his chest.

The breath rushed out of him.

He opened his eyes.

There was Ellen. Sitting in her yellow kitchen with her white cupboards and ancient hob with its two burners that didn’t work. Outside the window above the sink, golden leaves swirled past, carried on the wind, and clouds skated, wispy as pulled cotton, across the blue sky.

The worst thing had happened.

The worst possible thing.

The thing he had guarded against. The thing he had feared most.

And he found something surprising, buried down deep, underneath the rubble.

Despite the worst coming to pass, he didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to give up.

“Zoe and I will still be here. No matter what you choose.”

Sherlock shook his head, his cheeks wet. He swiped at them with his fingers.

“You’re wiser than you look, Ellen Edicott.”

He watched her wide mouth pull open to reveal the endearing gap between her front teeth.

“I’m a recovering perfectionist. That’s why Z left me behind to deal with you.”

Sherlock laughed, a short bark of sound. “She would have given me pie for breakfast,” he agreed, eyeing the pie tin that sat on the countertop covered by a tent of foil.

Ellen snorted, nodding in agreement. “Soft hearted that one. Pie and tissues." Ellen sobered. "And she would have told you to forgive yourself.”

Sherlock thumbed the jagged edge of his fingernail, pushing it back into place. “I suppose she has her own wisdom then.”

“You could, you know.”

“Forgive myself?”

“Yeah. Radical, I know.”

Sherlock smiled, wanly. It almost hurt to do so. It didn’t feel right. Yet.

“Maybe. Eventually.”

Ellen nodded. She understood.

“Want to go say good-bye?” she asked, gently. No judgement.

The pit where they had burned the hives needed to be covered with earth, any smouldering coals smothered.

Sherlock nodded.

“I appreciate it,” he said, softly, as they stood. “Thank you, Ellen. You and Zoe. I—“ he cut off, unable to continue.

Ellen pulled him into a quick, awkward hug. Hugs were more Zoe’s area. They definitely weren’t Sherlock’s. Somehow that made it mean more.

After, they shrugged on their jackets, which still held the sharp, charcoal scent of smoke from the night before, and grabbed a pair of shovels from the barn. Then, together, they went out to bury his bees.

 


	5. Chapter Five

Sherlock arrived home a little after ten. The sky was gravid, hanging low and gray overhead, the air thick with moisture. He and Ellen had worked hard trying to beat the rain and had just barely succeeded.

He was unloading his things from the back of his car when he heard footsteps crunching the gravel drive behind him. Sherlock turned to find his neighbour, Charlie’s dad, walking towards him.

The man raised his hand when he saw Sherlock had noticed him. “Hi,” he called out, speeding up his steps slightly to reach Sherlock.

“Hi,” Sherlock said, turning to retrieve the large box that Zoe had put together for him. It was the last of his things so he pulled the trunk door closed before turning back around.

“John Watson,” the man said, sticking out his right hand as he approached. Sherlock shook it, the man’s small, soft hand engulfed inside his larger, dirt caked one. “Oh,” John said, frowning, “you’re bleeding.”

Sherlock looked down at his finger and noted, with detached interest, that the fingernail that had cracked inside the Edicott kitchen had torn halfway off and was now seeping blood. Red spots dotted the ground around his feet.

“Huh,” he said, finding it impossible to summon more of a reaction.

“Do you have any first aid things?” John asked, looking at Sherlock circumspectly from beneath a furrowed blonde brow. He was neatly put together, Sherlock thought, taking him in for the first time. Trimmed silver-blonde hair that he had raked to one side with his fingers. Freshly pressed blue and white checked shirt, buttoned up to his throat. His jeans were clean and unwrinkled, his brown shoes worn but obviously taken care of. Polished even. Military, Sherlock thought, the word floating through his mind without landing.

“I’m a doctor,” John explained, turning Sherlock’s hand over to better study the raw nail bed. John’s palm was warm against Sherlock’s, breaking through the cold numb shell that had settled around him since the burial had been completed. “I could help,” he suggested, loosening his firm grip as Sherlock took back his hand. 

“Come in,” Sherlock said, shifting the box from where he had balanced it on his hip into both hands as he walked towards the house.

Inside Sherlock went through into the kitchen, tracking mud onto the lino, but not really caring. He set the box down on the counter beside the sink and grabbed the kettle. “Tea?” he asked, filling it from the tap.

“Here, let me,” John said, stepping up close beside Sherlock and wrapping his hand around the handle, below Sherlock’s. The brief touch snapped with static electricity and sent a sizzling shock traveling up Sherlock’s arm, penetrating his fog once more. Sherlock looked down at him, but John was already shuffling along the counter’s edge to set the kettle in its base and switch it on.

“Sit down,” the man said, in a voice that brooked no refusals, rifling through Sherlock’s cupboards in search of cups and tea bags.

“To the left,” Sherlock directed, his voice scratchy and deep. He cleared his throat as he sat down at his table, laying his injured hand flat. Blood pooled on top, red streaks running down the back of Sherlock’s hand. He wondered at it. How had he not noticed?

“You have any plasters? Alcohol? I could run home if—“

“In the mud room,” Sherlock said, slouching forward, a bone-deep exhaustion mantling him, his eyes ponderously heavy, his ears buzzing.

“This might hurt,” John warned, Sherlock’s hand once more cradled in his. Time was jumping forwards in small disorienting bursts. He couldn’t remember John sitting down beside him. This time John’s fingertips were pressed to Sherlock’s pulse, their palms resting against each other, steadying him, as John gently dabbed at Sherlock’s finger with an alcohol soaked cotton ball in his other hand. The pain crashed through Sherlock’s muted senses and he uttered a small unintelligible exclamation. John said something, his voice quiet and soothing, but Sherlock couldn’t understand him over the roar of blood that rose in his ears.

“I just stopped by to meet you,” John was saying, his head now hidden behind the open fridge door. Time had leapt again and Sherlock blinked at the cup of tea before him. Alongside it were two paracetamol and a glass of water. Sherlock lifted it to his lips and downed it in one long gulp. “I should have introduced myself before, but life is…it’s…busy right now. I’m sorry it took me so long to come over.”

Milk appeared next to the teacup and Sherlock tilted his head to look up at John.

Kind blue eyes gazed back at him. Sherlock’s throat felt tight and hot with gratitude, his tongue thick and mute inside his mouth.

“Charlie said she met you. And your bees. She couldn’t stop talking about them. About you. I figured I needed to come meet you.”

He smiled with one half of his mouth, his eyes moving softly over Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock’s heart did an odd back flip inside his chest.

“We talked about Carrot possibly offering his mousing services,” Sherlock said, mind and mouth finally working in unison.

John huffed a laugh, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “I’m afraid the cat’s fairly useless, but he’s at your service.”

A moment stretched out between them. Easy and familiar. Friendly. Intimate. A warm, contented feeling settled in Sherlock’s navel, radiating out through his limbs, dispelling the numbness. He skin sparked as if his whole body had fallen asleep and was now being woken up in a coursing rush of blood. His finger throbbed and ached, but Sherlock didn’t mind it so much.

“I should be going,” John said, taking a step backwards.

“You should bring Charlie by sometime,” Sherlock said, standing. “I can introduce her to the bees. Properly.”

“She’d really like that,” John said, smiling again in that uneven way, one half of his mouth tugged up, then paused.

“What?”

“Well, I’m not sure if she’s allergic or not.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, unaccountably disappointed. He followed John into the mudroom. “Are you?”

John shook his head, one hand turning the doorknob.

“Her mum?”

John shook his head again. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

“Ok,” Sherlock said, relieved for no reason he could fathom. 

“How’s this weekend?”

Sherlock nodded. “Sunday?”

It had started to rain lightly. Droplets caught in John’s fringe as he stepped outside. The beech trees behind him glowed in the white light from the low-hanging clouds, their gold and green leaves shimmering in the wind, glossy and wet. “Great. What time?”

“Morning’s best.”

“All right. Say 8?”

“Perfect. See you then,” Sherlock said, starting to close the door.

“Oh, um, your finger,” John said, and Sherlock stopped, looking out at him through the crack. “Keep it clean. You can remove the plaster and put a new one on tomorrow. It’ll be more of a nuisance than anything; until the nail grows back.”

“Ok. Thank you,” Sherlock said, realising he hadn’t said that yet. “For that. For the tea. I appreciate it. It was a long night.”

“I could tell,” John said, the shoulders of his shirt starting to darken from the rain. “I hope everything is all right?”

“Not all right, but…” Sherlock shrugged. "It will be."

“Yeah,” John said, as if he could understand. There was a moment again, purling out between them, slowly unfolding, each second that slipped by doubled, tripled, as if they’d known each other longer than twenty minutes, as if they’d known each other forever. It made Sherlock’s stomach feel funny, made his heart beat faster.

“Right. See you Sunday, then,” John said, looking up at the sky as if just noticing that it was raining.

“Sunday.”

John raised a hand in farewell and dashed towards the trees, shoulders hunched up against his ears, rain pelting his back.

Sherlock watched him until he’d disappeared into the grove.

_It’s Friday_ , he thought, feeling a little better, for no reason at all, as he shut the door and went back to the table to fix his tea.


	6. Chapter Six

Sherlock went upstairs after John left and took a shower. Then he laid down on the sofa in the sitting room, intending to take a short nap, and woke up eight hours later.

The room was dark around him, his house set too far back from the road for streetlights to reach his windows. He could hear the wind moving in the trees and Sherlock rose and went out into it, fetching his satchel from the car and an armful of logs for the fire.

Once a tidy blaze was building in the hearth he made himself a cup of tea and sat down at his desk with his journals and a pen. Blowing a cool stream of air over the fragrant rose-gold surface of the tea Sherlock opened to the section where he kept his records for his Cloversweet Hill hives. He pored over them, searching for any sign, any tiniest portent of impending doom, and found none. He turned to the pages where he kept notes on the local beekeeper’s association meetings and looked to see if anyone had mentioned finding foulbrood in their hives. He noted that Oliver Pollack, the beekeeper who was closest in proximity to Cloversweet, had reported his hives clean and healthy at the August meeting. Frustrated, Sherlock set his cup in its saucer and paced the rug.

If there had been any mention of foulbrood at the last meeting he would have treated his hives with terramycin after he had removed the last of his supers in August instead of waiting for the fall. It baffled Sherlock that there was no trace of foulbrood in the area. Where had it come from? Had a swarm from another beekeeper’s hives turned feral been infected and spread it to his hives through robbing? But then why hadn’t it been mentioned at the meeting? Had one of his foragers picked it up from an infected hive and brought it home? But upon inspecting his notes he found no evidence for this. He regularly checked the woods surrounding the Edicott farm for swarms. There had been none present on his walkthrough in September and Oliver had reported the same for his surrounding area.

Sherlock sat back down at the desk. It would feel better if he could pinpoint the cause so that he would know what to do differently going forward. He had combined a weak hive with a stronger one in August. This had required killing the queen in the weaker hive and setting the upper hive body on top of its neighbour separated by a sheet of newspaper. Every queen had her own unique chemical scent marker which set each colony apart. Over the course of a few days the bees would eat through the newsprint barrier and by that time the pheromone marker from the old queen would have faded enough for the bees to be accepted into the new hive and marked by their new queen's pheromone. He had also added honey from the old hive into the stronger one to help bolster their stores in preparation for the winter. This might have been where the trouble began. Although he hadn’t found evidence for foulbrood in the weaker hive, he had found evidence of robbing, bees from another hive plundering the honey stores, because the colony’s numbers had been too low to effectively defend their hive. Had the robber bees come from his own hives or from an outside source? Had they been Pollack’s bees? Or wild ones?

He kept coming back to Oliver Pollack. Sherlock didn’t know the man well. He was new to beekeeping and kept to himself at meetings, only speaking to answer questions put to him by the council. By now news of Sherlock’s misfortune would have reached the rest of the association, but Sherlock felt the need to warn Oliver personally. His phone battery was still dead so Sherlock plugged it in to charge and went to make another cup of tea. While he waited for the water to boil he unpacked the crate that Zoe had sent him home with. He found labels for his honey bottles, including a special set for the Christmas markets that Sussex held, with sprigs of holly adorning the edges. He had already deposited the cheeses— stilton, goat, cheddar—into the fridge earlier, but now he pulled out the pie tin that Ellen had tucked inside and took it into the sitting room with him.

Eating straight from the tin and sipping tea Sherlock set his mind to unpacking the problem. As he worked, the fire warmed him, the apples and cinnamon contented him, and the chamomile calmed him. Despite the fact that the solution remained maddeningly out of reach, Sherlock felt far better than he had the night before.

Picking up his mobile Sherlock dialled Oliver. The call rang through to voicemail and Sherlock left a brief message, asking Pollack to call him back when he had the time.

Scrolling through the messages of condolence from other members in the association, Sherlock set his phone aside and leaned back in his seat, stretching his arms over his head. After laying another log on the fire he picked up his pen and began to set down an account of the previous day’s ordeal in his new notebook.

An hour later he found himself no closer to an answer for why it had happened. All he could do now was wait for the November meeting and talk it over with the other members of the association.

Tomorrow he would drive out to his other hives, five that were set back from the banks of a stream where there were blackberry canes and an orchard nearby, and another ten that were placed on a local sheep farm who sowed alfalfa in their fields to feed them. All provided strong sources of nectar and according to his notes, both sets of hives had had strong summer yields. He knew already that he would need to split one hive near the blackberry canes or risk a late season swarm.

As Sherlock reviewed his notes he felt a knot of worry twist in his stomach. Dread at what he could find tomorrow. He comforted himself with the reminder that these hives were out of range of his infected hives and that loss was a part of beekeeping. There were simply too many variables to control for. A beekeeper did their best. He was doing his best.

Sherlock spread out the dying embers in the fireplace and cleared his things to the sink, which was now full. Resigned, Sherlock filled it with warm, soapy water and set to scrubbing them clean, knowing that it would make tomorrow easier if he did this small chore now. A light came on in the house on the hill. The bandage around his finger was loosening in the water and the heat stung his exposed nail bed. He would need to change the plaster before he went to bed. His thoughts turned easily to John Watson. The crisp, clean-cut appearance, the dark blue eyes, the side swept smile, the efficient, capable way he had seen to Sherlock’s finger, the comfortable, natural ease with which they had spoken. The feel of his hand holding Sherlock’s. He thought about Sunday as he dried the plates and teacups and put them away. He thought about what he would show Charlie. He thought about his personal hives and how he had come to love them. How he woke up each day to greet them, how he met them in the lane when he went for walks, how attuned he had become to their sounds, their patterns, their lives. He would give the Watsons honey from his home hives, he decided as he climbed the stairs to bed, imagining the precocious girl in the yellow wellies and the blonde doctor in his buttoned up shirt.

As he climbed into bed and shut off the light he noticed that the knot had somewhat unwound itself, anxiety about tomorrow fading into acceptance. Whatever happened, he would handle it. And Sunday would be a good day. Sunday, he thought, as he closed his eyes, he would get to show off his bees.


	7. Chapter Seven

The next morning he drove beneath a clementine coloured sky and reached the blackberry hives just as the bees began to stir.

He sat crosslegged atop their lids and watched the sunbeams catch in their iridescent wings as the foragers flew out to ransack the wild asters that were growing on the opposite bank of the stream. They rooted about the lemony centres, gathering pollen. 

A few rose to inspect him, but he sat very still, allowing them to walk up and down his forearms and over his knuckles. Two inquisitive ones landed on the lip of his thermos cup and dipped their antenna into the rising steam. Singed, they rose and shivered in the air as if sharing the experience with each other, as if they were saying to one another: _Oh! What was that terrible hot thing that just burned us?_

It was a beautiful clear day, washed clean from the rain the day before. The sun rose higher in the sky and touched Sherlock’s cheeks. He tipped his head up into its warmth. He sipped his coffee and closed his eyes and listened to the stream: the plunge of the water over the rocks and the hushed whispering sound of its flow through the grasses that grew along the bank. The air smelled of wet stone and damp earth. He caught, every now and then, tendrils of smoke wafting by on the light breeze. He had lit his smoker and left it to smoulder over by his car. If the smoke was too hot when he blew it into the hives it could harm the bees, burning them badly and melting their wings.

Smoke did two things to calm and sedate the bees. Bees communicated with one another in two primary ways: “dancing”, a series of patterned movements, and smell. When guard bees believed the hive to be under threat they released pheromones warning the other bees that something was wrong. This pheromone was so strong that it could mark the beekeeper as he worked in other hives as well, singling him out as an intruder. Smoke masked this pheromone so that the alarm couldn’t be spread. Smoke also made the bees think that their hive was in danger of being destroyed by fire. In preparation to abandon their home the bees would eat as much honey as they could to sustain them until they could establish a new hive. Engorged, their bodies became too full to assume the position to sting and became lethargic, as someone after eating a large meal. It made it possible for him to open the bee hives and remove the frames without getting stung or marked as the enemy.

Finishing his coffee, Sherlock climbed down carefully from his perch on top of the hives and walked to his car. Zipping himself into his bee suit, he got to work.

After letting the smoke take effect Sherlock used his hive tool to gently pry the top of the first hive off. Puffing more smoke into the top he waited another minute before taking up his frame grips and pulling up the frames one at a time. Sherlock sunk into the rhythm of the hive, keeping his movements calm and slow. He could feel his heartbeat sync with the thrum of the colony. His breathing evened out. In this immersive mental and physical state he worked happily for an hour, finding these hives in good shape and not needing much intervention from him. Even the hive he had planned on uniting with a stronger one had surprised him and, though on the smaller side, had enough stores built up to survive the winter. His relief was immense and he felt his shoulders release some tension he hadn’t been aware he was holding as he sprinkled the mixture of powdered sugar and thymol medication onto the top of the frames for the bees to eat and medicate themselves against Varoa. Closing up the last of the five hives and setting the final brick on top, he stepped back and took a deep breath. The air was sweet and cool on his tongue, his body loose and warm and relaxed.

There was no way to control it, he thought, looking out over the stream and the magenta clutch of asters on the far green bank. 

The bees weren’t something he could control. The complexity of their lives astonished him every time he got a glimpse of their intricately ordered world. The colony had so many jobs, so many variables, so many vulnerabilities; it was an illusion to think he could control them all. That he could somehow prevent calamity through sheer force of will. If beekeeping was teaching him anything it was that perfection was unattainable. Hives failed. Hives thrived. Hives swarmed. They grew sick. They grew strong. They were just a microcosm for the world. All he could control was himself. He could be present, he could follow the wisdom of others, he could experiment, he could observe, he could let the bees lead.

Sherlock wondered if he had put too much pressure on the bees. He had given up his old life. Maybe his expectation for the bees to replace that old life had been too high. Maybe the need for him to be successful at this new life, after the spectacular crash and burn failure of the old, had been driving him to put too much pressure on this enterprise to be successful.

What even was success when it came to beekeeping?

Sherlock picked up his tools and his smoker and made his way back to his car. Unzipping his veil, he sat on the banks of the stream and drank water from his water bottle.

It was easy to get caught up in the definition of success as the amount of honey one could glean from their hives. It was easy to get caught up in wanting to show off the productivity of his bees at the farmers markets and win praise and monetary compensation. It was all too easy to see the failure of his hives as a yet another personal failure.

Sherlock had run away from his last failure and now he found that it had followed him here.

Maybe he needed to redefine what success looked like for him.

Make it explicit. Make it accountable. Untie it from the fear of failure. And make it his own.

What would he do with the bees if his definition of success wasn’t tied to productivity? To results? What if failure was a part of it? Invited in, from the very beginning.

The sun was high in the sky now. It shone on the slick river stones, bringing out their cinnamon, hazelnut, and bronze hues. The viridian river grass waved in the current and tiny silver fish faced upstream in a shimmering cluster. Across from him the bees were giddy amongst the pink blossoms.

Taking out his journal, Sherlock made notes about the state of his blackberry hives, and in the back of his mind he kept the questions close at hand. Tonight he would sit down with his fears and give them the floor. Maybe if he could figure out what was holding him back, he’d have an easier time seeing the way forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last night as I was sleeping,  
> I dreamt—marvelous error!—  
> that I had a beehive  
> here inside my heart.  
> And the golden bees  
> were making white combs  
> and sweet honey  
> from my old failures.
> 
> -Antonio Machado


	8. Chapter Eight

Sherlock woke to the slightly agitated calls of the doves outside his window.

_Koo- KOO- kook._

_Koo- KOOOO- Kook._

_Aw!_

_AW!_

_Koo- KOO- KOOK_.

Upon inspection there was Carrot, sitting on the brick patio out back, an intent stillness, green eyes unblinking, a warm tangerine glow amid the pale mist.

Sherlock looked out over the white shrouded grounds. The sun was already breaking through; it would rise soon enough. Sherlock turned back to his rumpled bed. It was Sunday, a day for chores.

He stripped his mattress and gathered the sheets into his arms, still warm from his body. The stale, sweet, musky scent tickled the back of his nose. They went into the hamper and the pillow cases were next. The towels from his bathroom, from the kitchen, stained with coffee grounds, turmeric, raspberry jam; he stuffed them all into the washer, shivering in his pants, before putting the coffee on and running up the stairs to the shower.

He shaved. Close. Ran the mousse through his curls with his fingers and breathed deep the sharp evergreen scent. He dressed: khaki work trousers, blue chambray button down. The fresh sheets pulled taut: crisp. Satisfying. They smelled pleasingly of soap and the cedar wood of his closet shelves. He smoothed the wrinkles flat in his duvet as he made the bed, plumped his pillows, folded the extra quilt at the foot.

Downstairs, Sherlock boiled two eggs and made toast. Watched Carrot out the kitchen window as he sipped his coffee. The cat was watchful. His eyes traced a bird, cutting a black arc against the white sky. They stalked a squirrel walking the telephone tight-wire between Sherlock’s house and the Watson one. They slitted closed as he scratched an itch behind his ear and then he left, on silent, padding footsteps, disappearing into the fog-thick copse.

Sherlock was splitting wood when the Watsons found him. The last glimmering ribbons of mist clinging to the air as the sun streaked through the trees. Sherlock shrugged on his shirt and, buttoning it, went to meet them.

“Dr. Watson,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “Hello, Charlie.” He nodded to the girl who’s eyes were trained on the gravel drive. John took his hand back from Sherlock and wrapped it around her shoulder, pulling her into his body.

“She’s a bit shy,” John explained and Sherlock nodded. John tilted his head. “I realised I never got your name, on Friday.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, surprised. “I’m sorry. I suppose I was a bit out of sorts. My name is Sherlock Holmes.” There was always a fraught moment of trepidation after he introduced himself. The question of whether or not someone would recognise him hovering. He had won no small infamy for his battle with Moriarty. When he had been searching for towns to retire to, a part of Fulworth’s charm had partly been due to the fact that its citizens seemed not to care much for his grisly fame, nor the scandal that had swirled around the rumours of his death and subsequent resurrection. But Sherlock found no spasm of recognition on John’s face, no furrowed brow as he tried to place the name. Just a genuine smile, side-swept.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Holmes.”

“Please, call me Sherlock.”

“All right. And you must, of course, call me John.” Sherlock inclined his head and let his mind dissect the pair a bit before reining it in. John had clumps of sleep still caught in the corners of his eyes and a day’s worth of stubble shadowing his jaw. His hair was finger combed and mussed and his jumper a tad wrinkled, as if just pulled from a dryer that had sat cold and forgotten for days. A bit rumpled overall compared to the man of military grade coiff that Sherlock had met two days before. He found it compelling for no reason other than that this was useful data when taking the measure of the man.

“How’s the finger?” The question interrupted Sherlock’s estimation and brought him back to the present. 

Sherlock raised his hand, fresh plasters affixed. “Much better, thank you again for your help.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look later; if there’s time, of course.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

Charlie shifted, pulling away from her father and peering around Sherlock’s side, towards the honey shed.

“Right, shall we?” Sherlock said, turning and extending his arm in the direction of the hives. Charlie nodded eagerly, her brown eyes sweeping up to meet Sherlock’s, wide and bright. Sherlock felt an answering tremor of excitement ripple up his spine as they walked. The girl was dressed in pyjama bottoms festooned with an animated character Sherlock didn’t recognise and a pink mackintosh. The yellow boots were again in residence, her short hair held back by a headband with two bobbing ladybug antennae sprouting out the top, and there was milk crust clinging to the corners of her mouth from her breakfast.

Once they passed the honey shed he stopped, the bees’ domain spreading before them. Lucent autumn light spread itself over the green hill. Wind sent the gold leaves shimmering, a few alighting, spinning madly against the clear blue sky. Sherlock turned to them, both pairs of eyes trained on him expectantly.

“I suppose it might be helpful to know what you know about honey bees,” Sherlock said, casting about a bit for where to begin. So many pertinent facts presented themselves at once, wanting to be shared, he hoped the Watsons might pick one he could begin with.

“They make honey from flowers,” Charlie said. Her eyes flared. “And they sting!” John nodded, wincing sheepishly. “That’s about the extent of it, I’m afraid.” 

“Is it true that bees die when they sting something?” Charlie asked, looking concerned.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, glad of a place to start. “It is true that honey bees die after they lose their stinger, however, you shouldn’t feel too badly because they were just doing their job of protecting the hive.

“There are three types of honey bees: the queen, the worker, and the drone. The queen is the leader of colony. She is the only bee who mates with male bees and lays eggs. The drone is a male bee whose only job is to try and mate with a queen. Drones are mainly produced in the spring when the queen takes her mating flight. They are otherwise a drain on colony supplies, eating essential honey and not providing any other service. They are eventually shut out of the hive as summer ends. The rest of the colony is made up of infertile female worker bees, who fill different roles over the course of their life: a nurse bee feeds and tends to brood, a house bee produces honey comb and keeps the hive clean, they also make honey from nectar, help ventilate the hive, and guard the hive entrance. Towards the end of their maturity they are foragers, bringing water, pollen, and propolis back to the hive.”

“How long does a bee live?” Charlie asked, her gaze following the haphazard path of a bee that was making her mazy way from the hive to the grape coloured asters across the velvet stretch of lawn.

“Queens can live for 2-3 years, drones, depending on the strength of the colony, live a few months, worker bees around 6 weeks during the summer, but during the winter they live a little longer.”

“What’s propo—“ Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Propo…” She looked to her father for help.

“Propolis is what the bees make to glue their hive together so that cold and moisture don’t get in.” Sherlock stepped towards the hives, intending to show them, but, remembering what John had been worried about when they had talked the day before, he paused. “Are you ok with her getting closer to the hive, or…”

John fished something out of his pocket and held it up. An epi-pen. “Just in case.”

Sherlock nodded and led them over so that they were a few feet away. Each hive consisted of three or four boxes stacked on top of each other.

“Inside each box are ten frames. In the top ones they make honey, the bottom one is where the brood chamber is. This is where the queen lays her eggs and the young bees are hatched. Do you see that dark brown substance around the edge of the lid? That’s propolis.”

“Why did you paint them blue?” John asked.

“Bees see colours most vividly towards the blue end of the colour spectrum. They also see ultraviolet light. Flowers reflect a lot of ultraviolet light and appear very bright to bees. They cannot see red.” Sherlock smiled, catching John’s eye and lifting one shoulder, aware of the whimsy. “And I like blue.”

"What's that smell?" Charlie asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Sherlock started to chuckle, but just then there was the crash of a door slamming in the distance. All of them turned to look through the trees towards the Watson house. They could just make out a figure coming down the back steps of the porch through the trunks.

“Bugger,” John muttered under his breath, his mouth hardening into a thin line, worry lines feathering his eyes. “That’s my mum. I’ve got to—“ He looked at Charlie.

Charlie looked at Sherlock. “Can I stay?”

Sherlock nodded, absorbing the panicked energy radiating off John’s tense body. “I’ll make tea. She can taste some of my honeys. You can bring your mum—“

“Ok. Right. I’ll just be a moment.” John started walking quickly towards the beech trees, calling over his shoulder, “Charlie, be good. I’ll be right back.”

Sherlock settled Charlie at the table on his patio and went inside to make the tea. As he moved around the kitchen, gathering the supplies, he watched as Charlie sat quietly at the table, legs swinging, ladybug antennae swaying in the light breeze, her eyes upturned. Sherlock followed the direction of her gaze and watched as John took the woman’s arm and led her back up the stairs and into the house. When Sherlock looked back the girl was bent forward and clicking her tongue at Carrot who was slinking along the driveway, escaped, no doubt, when John’s mum had provided the opportunity. Charlie gathered the cat onto her lap where he curled up into a soft gingery heap.

Sherlock’s scalp tingled with curiosity—John's mum was the woman Sherlock had seen in the window—but he set it aside as he focused on the task before him. He set three small bowls on the tray beside the tea things and filled them each with honey: the clover, the blackberry, and lastly, from his home hives, the floral. He slid a small silver spoon into each golden ambrosial pool and then went to join Charlie outside.


	9. Chapter Nine

The sunlight outside dazzled his eyes as he made his way to the table and set down the chiming tray. He poured for them both, leaving the third empty so that John would not come back to tepid tea. There is a fourth set out on the counter inside, just in case the mother was coaxed along. As Sherlock fixed his tea the way he liked—sugar, two scoops, and a splash of milk—his eyes darted towards the Watson house, distracted, and so he doesn’t notice when Charlie empties one of the small bowls directly into her cup and stirs until the contents have dissolved.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, with some dismay and annoyance. He’d planned for them to taste each one, to compare the subtle flavours and colours. He’d planned to teach them about how different nectar sources affected the taste of the honey. In fact there was a whole anecdote he had prepared based on Charlie’s question about why the hives smelled bad that included a rather interesting bit about honeys that could harm humans. But now the blackberry honey bowl was almost empty and Charlie had wrapped her palms around her cup and was blowing across the surface, the steam curling up towards her antennae in a silky white stream. Sherlock slumped back in his seat, feeling a bit out of sorts, a bit grumbly about the missed opportunity, and sipped his too hot tea too fast so that it scalded the top of his mouth.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath as the burning sensation caused him to jolt forward, spilling his tea with a hot splash down his shirt front. “Charlie, would you pass me that hand towel?” He asked, sharpish, irritated.

“If it’s not too much trouble, Mr. Holmes, would you please call me Charlotte?” the girl asked, politely enough, as she passed the towel across the table to him. Sherlock raised his eyebrows at her as he dabbed at his shirtfront. “My dad calls me Charlie because that used to be my name when I was a boy. But now it’s not anymore and I’d rather you call me Charlotte.”

Sherlock stared at her, poleaxed. _When I was a boy…_

“I picked it,” she continued, holding the tea cup precariously tilted in one hand, while the other stroked the cat in her lap. “Like the new princess? It’s very pretty, isn’t it?”

Sherlock blinked at her, his body hot with some unnameable emotion.

What would have happened, he thought, if he had ever said such a thing, outright, to his father for instance, when he was this girl’s age?

I’m gay, father, please stop suggesting I’ll marry Ann Pritchett down the lane, if you’d be so kind.

It made him shiver to think what would have ensued after such a frank, honest statement.

_When I was a boy…_

Sherlock blinked. “I’d be happy to call you Charlotte,” he said, feeling entirely unworthy of receiving such a earnest, vulnerable confession and wondering if he was bollocksing it up properly. “It is very pretty indeed. A good choice. Thank you for telling me.” There was a small hot stone caught at the back of his throat that wouldn’t go down no matter how many times he swallowed.

“Mr. Holmes, I read that baby bees eat bee bread, but—“ here she cocked her head, confusion knotting her brows together, “—how?”

Sherlock couldn’t help himself, he chuckled. He regretted it a bit because Charlotte blushed and her eyes widened and she said, “What?”, a little defensively, assuming that he was laughing at her ignorance.

“You’re quite right, Charlotte, the name is confusing. It makes one think of tiny loaves doesn’t it? Bees wearing oven mitts?” He laughed again and this time Charlotte joined him, giggling.

_When I was a boy…_

Sherlock found himself studying her surreptitiously, looking for signs that he might have missed before, but then chastising himself for the scrutiny. It didn’t matter did it? No. Intellectually and empathetically he knew that this new information didn’t change anything about her, but he still found himself curious. But he didn't want to be curious at the same time. It didn't feel respectful, it felt voyueristic or something. Sherlock tried to dispel the feeling of discomfort by just accepting it.

“Bee bread is a mixture of pollen and saliva and nectar and honey. When the forager bee lands on a flower it collects the pollen and brushes it off the hairs on its body to store in two baskets on its hind legs. It then carries the pollen back to the hive where it stores it inside chambers close to the nursery where the baby bees are developing. Nursery bees mix it with honey and feed it to the babies.”

“So they only eat pollen when they’re babies?”

“That’s mostly right,” Sherlock said, reaching across the table and picking up the small bowl of honey from his home hives. “Pollen is rich in protein, which the baby bees need to grow. House and worker bees will also eat it, although honey is their main source of energy as they get older. Once a bee has matured to the point that it becomes a forager it stops making the enzyme needed to digest pollen and doesn’t consume it any longer.” He spooned a small dollop onto the back of his hand, near the base of his thumb and rested it on the arm rest. There were a few bees foraging amongst the blooming ivy that clung to the walls of the house behind them. The honey might entice one or more of them to come down and meet Charlotte.

“Do bees make honey from pollen too?”

“That is a great question. No, bees make honey from nectar. Flowers secrete nectar as a way to attract pollinator insects and birds. It is sugary and very sweet. The bee sucks up the nectar with her proboscis and stores it in her honey stomach. When she goes back to the hive she regurgitates the nectar and gives it to a hive bee who then does the same thing. They pass the nectar along between them until their stomachs have broken the nectar down enough and removed enough water from it to be placed inside a honeycomb chamber. Hive bees are constantly fanning their wings to create a stable temperature so that water can continue to evaporate from the nectar, leaving the concentrated sugars, or honey, behind.”

Charlotte scrunched up her nose again in disgust. “So bees make honey with their throw-up?” she said, gagging a bit at this unfortunates news.

Again, Sherlock couldn’t help himself, he laughed. “When you put it that way, it sounds quite revolting doesn’t it?”

A bee alighted on the back of his hand just then and Charlotte’s abhorrence quickly faded as she stood up in her chair to lean over the table, dumping Carrot onto the ground. The cat slouched off, his tail twitching, towards a sunny patch of porch a few feet away.

“See that little thing that looks like a tongue?” Sherlock said, holding his hand steady so as not to alarm his little passenger. The bee was drinking from the honey drop, providing a perfect illustration of his description. “That’s her proboscis.”

“Oh,” Charlotte exclaimed, voice soft with wonder, “she’s lovely isn’t she?”

“She really is,” Sherlock agreed, absurdly proud. “Now, notice those two yellow bumps on her legs?”

Charlotte nodded, her brown eyes studiously trained on the bee. She blinked, almost going a bit cross eyed in her eagerness.

“Those are her pollen baskets. Her whole body, even her eyes, are covered in tiny hairs that the pollen attaches to. She then uses her legs to brush the pollen back and collects it in those baskets.”

“And is that how pollination happens?” Charlotte asked, her eyes widening as if she finally understood something she’d been thinking about.

“Exactly!” Sherlock said, impressed to no end with the cleverness of the little girl. “The bee carries the pollen with her from plant to plant and some inevitably falls off.”

“Hello, then, what’s this?” Sherlock jerked back; he hadn’t heard John approach, so intent were they on the bee. Jarred by his sudden movement the bee flew off, making her way back towards the hive.

“Daddy!” Charlotte said, leaping out of her chair. “Daddy, guess what?” Her eyes were bright and her face was wiggling wildly, her eyebrows and mouth and nose twitching in excitement.

“What?” John said, touching the top of her head fondly. Sherlock felt the hot stone return to the back of his throat at the obvious affection glowing between them.

_When I was a boy…_

John was a rare father, Sherlock thought, unable to tear his eyes away from the two. To accept and trust his daughter, to let her be herself…it made Sherlock’s chest so tight it was difficult to breathe. His father had done the opposite. Shamed him. Made him hide it. Tried to change him to fit in.

“Dad, honey is made from, oh, my gosh, Dad, you’ll never, never guess.” She was bouncing on her toes now, the antennae swinging back and forth.

“I’ll never guess, huh?” John glanced over at Sherlock, an amused smile playing at his lips. Sherlock shrugged and smiled back, the girl’s enthusiasm infectious.

“Vomit!” She fell about giggling. “Dad, it’s made of bee vomit!”

John’s face folded up in exaggerated horror. “That’s disgusting!” he said, and Charlotte laughed harder. John glanced over at Sherlock again, this time warm with gratitude. “I haven’t seen her laugh this hard in months,” he said, relief clear on his face. Charlotte grabbed his hands and swung them, trying to get his attention back.

“Dad, bees have hairs on their eyeballs!”

“All right, all right,” John said, “obviously you’ve had a grand time, but grandma’s not feeling well and I’m afraid we’re going to have to call it a day.”

Charlotte’s face fell in disappointment and her movement stilled.

“You’ll just have to come back another time then,” Sherlock said, standing. “The bees will be happy to have a visitor.”

Charlotte looked from Sherlock to her father, hopeful. “Can we, Daddy? Can we come back again?”

John looked at Sherlock as if to gauge whether he was just being polite. “If that’s all right with you…”

“I’d be delighted. Really. Any time.”

John nodded and stuck out his hand. Sherlock shook it, a brief, firm motion. “Thanks again. It’s all she’s been able to talk about. We’ve been googling bees almost every night.”

“I’m going to make a book!” Charlotte said, twirling, her pink mackintosh flaring out around her. “A book of bee facts! You can help me, Mr. Holmes. Will you?”

“Absolutely,” Sherlock said. “And please, call me Sherlock.”

“Ok, Mr. Sherlock,” she said, still spinning.

“What do we say?” John said.

“Thank you, Mr. Sherlock!” And with that she was skipping off towards the beech trees.

“Thanks again,” John said, his body half turned towards the direction Charlotte had disappeared in. “I’m sorry. My mum, she’s got Alzheimers. I’m trying to get home help right now, but until then it’s just me and…”

“Don’t worry about it. She’s quite bright,” Sherlock said.

John’s mouth slid up. “Yeah, she is.”

“I’ll be preparing the hives for winter, this week. Feel free to bring her by after school sometime.”

“Great, thank you, she’d love that.” John ran a hand through his hair, making the strands stick up. He took a few steps away. “See you soon, then.”

“See you,” Sherlock said, raising his hand in farewell.

He stood for a moment in the stillness that followed their departure. The wind moved through the tops of the trees, rustling the leaves. Carrot, left behind, blinked up at him lazily from where he was sprawled out on the brick and yawned. There was a shadow skulking in the back of his mind, his father conjured like some sinister ghost. Sherlock tucked those memories away, banishing the chilly pall they brought with them, and turned to clear the tea tray away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  
> 
>  
> 
> And if you'd like to watch a short video about bee bread:
> 
> [Bee Bread](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=227&v=sAKkjD3nEv0)


	10. Chapter Ten

But despite his best efforts the spectre of his father refused to desist its haunting.

The thoughts became so intruding that Sherlock finally gave up trying to outrun them, set down the book he was trying and failing to focus on, and closed his eyes. He stretched his legs out in front of him, his socked feet thrust into a warm pool of sunlight pouring in through the window above him. He crossed his arms across his chest and burrowed his shoulders into the armchair.

When was the last time he had seen his father?

The only thing that came to mind was Mycroft’s birthday six, seven years ago. The Opera. Which one? He couldn’t even recall. A Bellini perhaps. A Rossini. Italian, that was all he could be sure of.

His father had been there. Suited in finery, slim with his righteous abstinence, controlled, contained, grim. His pale cheeks, papery, crumpled, but cleanly shaven, no nicks for William. His throat had begun to sag a bit, there was grey hair sprouting in the canals of his large ears. His blue eyes had become a bit filmy, clouded. The cruel slit of them softened by heavy bags. Sherlock remembered being a bit shocked at the transformation that age had had. But William was a stately, decaying eighty-two at that time. He had had his children late in life. In his fifties; their mother too young to know better. Once she knew, she left. She married again, had more kids. Sherlock saw her occasionally, but had fallen out of touch in the last decade, except the odd Christmas card. William hadn’t been willing to part with his sons, fought her bitterly in court, and as a member of the House of Lords, had won sole custody of them.

Sherlock’s mind always boggled at that. How hard his father had fought for them. His two effeminate, bookish, quiet boys who would rather read or do maths than join rugby clubs or ride about on a horse or shoot a gun. He had treated them both with nothing but disdain and disgust; they were constant failures. Prissy, weak, girlish, fag boys. It had been an enormous relief when they were finally sent away to board at school, even if school had been a hell of its own kind.

The old man had died while Sherlock was away chasing down Moriarty’s network. When he had come back from the continent and resumed his life, he had found a letter from Mycroft in the care of his landlord, Mrs. Hudson. There was trust money, a deed to the family estate needing to be dealt with. Mycroft had waited for Sherlock to return before selling anything. Sherlock didn’t want anything, the lot of it was sold and divvied up between them. It had paid for two rounds of rehab, that house and its manicured grounds. It seemed fitting somehow.

Sherlock opened his eyes and looked around the small sitting room with its mismatched furniture, the faded red and gold damask wallpaper, the worn Turkish rug, the large chest that served as a coffee table littered with books and sheets of music. There was a desk beneath the window behind him, his violin stand in the corner, the fireplace before him with its wood stacked neatly to the side, sheaves of old newspapers collecting in a leather sling, ready to be used as tinder. He imagined his father’s reaction to the way he lived.

Sherlock closed his eyes again, his throat throbbing.

_I am not responsible for what my father thought or felt about me. I do not have to take on the shame he wanted me to feel about who I am. I accept that he couldn’t love me for who I am. That he would rather me have been miserable, or dead, than to be who I truly am. I do not have to let his hatred be my own self-hatred._

_I am not wrong. I am not disgusting. I am not unworthy of love._

The pain in his throat lessoned, but his breathing was ragged for minutes after, his fingertips dug into his ribs. 

_Enough_ , he thought, and he stood, grabbed his jacket, and went to do the shopping.

Inside Waitrose he menu planned for the week on the fly: soy sauce, frozen veg, biscuits, milk, shrimp, a whole chicken, potatoes, garlic, lemons. He bought pears and apples, fancy crackers to pair with the Edicott’s cheese. Pickles, bread, rice, eggs. Tea. Breakfast sausages, a small chocolate cake, beans, tomatoes.

Back at home there was Mozart for drowning out memories and fried rice with shrimp for supper. Outside his kitchen window the clarion fall light faded into a pale gold before being subsumed by night. The long summer days were behind them, it was 6:30pm when darkness fell.

He was just smoothing the rice out across the bottom of the pan when there was a knock on the back door. Sherlock, puzzled, took the pan off the heat, switched off the record player and, drying his hands on a kitchen towel, went through the mud room to answer it.

John Watson stood on his porch, smiling rather sheepishly up at him. Sherlock leaned into the jamb and raised his eyebrows in interest. “Hello.”

“I’m afraid I’ve come to beg a favour,” John said, with his eyes squished up and looking deeply uncomfortable, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve just been informed that I was volunteered to make cookies for Charlie’s class tomorrow and I haven’t got enough sugar in. Is there any way I could borrow a cup off you?”

Sherlock nodded. “Sure, come in.”

“God, it smells delicious in here,” John said, looking at the pile of pink shrimp and scrambled egg sitting in a bowl on the counter before leaning over the hob to peer into the pan.

“Would you like some?” Sherlock asked, taking the bag of sugar down from the spice cabinet.

“Oh, no, we already ate—“

“Sit a bit. I’m almost finished. You can take some back with you.”

“Really, I don’t want to be a bother—“

“You’re not. Sit.” Sherlock handed him the bag of sugar and turned back to finish the meal. It was only a matter of minutes now, frying the rice until it was brown and crispy and then throwing in the frozen carrots and peas, the soy sauce, the sliced scallions, and the shrimp and egg mix.

“I’m sorry to put you up like this, I was just tucking Charlie into bed, just now, and she says ‘Oh! Daddy, I told Ms. Blanchard that we’d bring cookies tomorrow for the fall fete’ and bloody hell I couldn’t even muster up a proper punishment I was so tired after today.”

Sherlock didn’t know if it had been all of the memories stirred up about his father, the memories of the pain a father could cause, but hearing John call his daughter by her old name (for the second time in mere minutes), made something inside him snap.

“She doesn’t like it,” Sherlock said, turning the rice over, to mix in all of the ingredients. “She doesn’t like being called Charlie, did you know that?” He turned his head to look at John as he continued to stir with his right hand, trying to keep his voice level, non-aggressive.

“Pardon me?” John said, blinking stupidly at Sherlock. “Did she tell you that?”

“She did,” Sherlock said, angry and taking it out on the wrong person. Clearly, since John had proven himself to be, thus far, a better father than Sherlock’s ever was, but still. It rankled. Got under his skin. “She asked me to call her Charlotte today. She said that was her name when she was a boy and that you still called her by it because of that.”

Sherlock was half expecting John to get defensive and yell at him to mind his own business, and Sherlock would have deserved it, but he just sat there for a moment, staring at the table top before he leant forward and hung his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, feeling instantly guilty. There was a more diplomatic way to put it and he should have tried to find it before he’d just gone and blurted it out like an accusation. “I shouldn’t have said it like—“

“No, no.” John slowly straightened, looking worn out. “You’re quite right. She hasn’t said anything to me, but I know you’re right, I can tell. Christ, it feels like I can’t get anything right right now.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Sherlock said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and ill suited to the task of comforting the man.

“It’s just,” John was looking at wall as if it wasn’t there, his hair disarranged, his eyes wide. “Charli—Charlotte, fuck, Charlotte told us, you know, my wife and I and so…So.” John swallowed, his hand twitching against the table. “And then the divorce happened. And then mum. And the move. It’s just. Been. A. Lot. Lately.” John seemed to take a short gasping breath between each word and Sherlock was alarmed that he might be fighting back tears. “So. Yeah. I’ve been a bit careless with her name. And I shouldn’t be. My mum, she’s not all there anymore, and she gets Charlotte’s pronouns wrong a lot and my girl, she’s understanding and really brave about it, but I know it can’t be easy. So, thank you. Thank you for the reminder.”

He looked pale and peaky, the stubble dark and grainy on his cheeks, his forehead deeply lined.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, walking the sugar bag over to the table and setting it down. He felt like something more was needed so he reached out and put his hand on John’s shoulder. Left it there for a moment as John took a deep breath, his lashes spiky and black against his cheek. “You’re a good dad. You obviously love her. Not every dad would let her be herself. She’ll forgive you.”

Sherlock, his heart racing, unaccustomed to the intimacy of such a moment, took his hand back and turned, busying himself with spooning some of the fried rice into a pyrex for John to take with him.

Behind him John cleared his throat. The chair scraped across the lino as he stood.

“Thank you,” he said, as Sherlock turned to hand him the food. “Thank you for the sugar. And this. And for earlier, for sitting with Charlotte. She hasn’t been able to stop talking about it.” His eyes creased at their corners, his mouth inching up to one side. “And thanks for having the courage to be honest with me. That’s rather rare, I think. I appreciate it.”

Sherlock ducked his head, at a loss for how to take that in. John nodded too, and then turned and started walking to the door. Sherlock followed.

“Before I go, I was wondering if I might get your number? Or give you mine?” John asked, as he stepped out onto the porch. It was dark and quiet and the cold air felt good on Sherlock’s hot cheeks.

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock said, fumbling for his mobile in his pocket, as John’s hands were full.

“Thought it might be a bit easier this way. You can let us know when it’s a good day to come by and meet the bees. And then you won't have Watsons showing up on your doorstep unannounced, at all hours.”

“Good idea,” Sherlock said, smiling dryly at John who huffed a self-deprecating laugh, as he thumbed through to get to the new contact screen. He looked at John, his finger hovering, and tapped it in as John recited it.

“Send me a text and I’ll save your number, yeah?” John said, taking a step back, half of him engulfed in darkness, half still illuminated from the light from the kitchen. “And thanks again. Truly.”

Sherlock held up his hand and waited, listening to John’s steps on the gravel and the crackle of sticks breaking underfoot as he made his way through the wood. Before he went back inside he sent John a text.

_Come Tuesday afternoon, if you like. 🐝_

It was a few minutes before Sherlock received an answer. He wondered, as he dug into his dinner, if that was the first time he had ever sent an emoji. Was that something that only young people did? But he wanted John to know it was him, he countered, and in the moment a bee had seemed the likeliest way without signing his name.

_Perfect. How’s your finger by the way? I completely forgot to ask._

_It’s healing fine. Good luck with the cookies._

_Thanx 🍪_

Sherlock supposed emojis were all right.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Sherlock woke suddenly and sat up, sticky tendrils of nightmare clinging to him. His heart pounding, his breath coming short, he blinked at the room, black around him.

He fell back, into pillows damp from his sweat, even though the air on his cheeks was cold enough to bite.

Anxiety had plagued him all night long. Childhood trauma unearthed and manifesting as the mystery surrounding his dead bees. He had tossed and turned, unable to settle, his mind going over and over the details. The self recriminating cycle had only ended when he had remembered that Oliver Polk had never returned his phone calls. Sherlock decided he would pay the man a visit and sort it the next day. With this decision finally in place he had fallen into an exhausted, shallow sleep.

He could hear the rain sheeting on the glass. Could see the bare outline of the window, the panes smudged in chalky ash against the dark outside. Sherlock focused on it until his heart rate had returned to normal, his breathing becoming slow and regular.

He dressed in the deep amber light from his bedside lamp, his clock reading 4:43am.

Feet thrust into wellies and a brolly grabbed from the stand beside the door, Sherlock ducked out into the storm and walked the short distance to his honey shed, a torch lighting the way.

Inside he started a fire in the cast iron stove, set his Moka pot to perk on top, and put the needle randomly into the grooves of Mozart’s violin concertos on vinyl.

As the sweetness of the music filled his chest, he closed his eyes and let himself sway a bit in his chair, conducting with his chin and shoulders. The heat from the fire slowly warmed the room around him and released the scent of beeswax and the resin from the bare pine wood walls. He breathed in the soothing, familiar smells and marvelled at how easily it was to fall back into old habits. How simply he could take up the mantle of hating himself. How natural it felt. A relief, almost. 

It had been so effortless once. An addict, a stoic, a genius, a cold, calculating machine. He had turned off emotion of any kind, becoming like his father: caustic, cruel, condescending.

Until it had all unraveled with Moriarty and a non-descript DI named James Little. Shame and guilt had unmoored him, set him adrift on a sea of emotion, capsized him, almost drowned him. If not for his brother, finding him in time, if not for a therapist that had finally gotten through, if not for Celia Little pouring tea for him, if not for her hand on top of his and her soft fawn coloured eyes holding no hint of the hatred he so rightly deserved…

The work of self-worth was never finished. It required constant effort, constant vigilance, constant forgiveness, constant empathy. It was exhausting.

He wondered if he would ever be able to summon enough of the latter two to atone for the man that had haunted his dreams. The average lifespan for a British male was 80 years. He had forty-three years left to try. 

When the coffee was ready Sherlock dragged his attention to practical matters: repairing broken 10-frames. His fingers were raw and gritty by the time the sun rose at 7 and he laid aside his small hammer and rattling biscuit tin of nails. He rinsed his mug and Moka pot at the small sink and set them to dry in the rack on the shelf above. He tidied the espresso and sugar away and spread out the pulsing embers in the bottom of the stove. Rain still beat against the roof, swaths of it soaking the shed’s two windows. It would make wretched weather for traipsing about through the woods that separated the Polk farm from Cloversweet Hill, but Sherlock was determined to lay the matter to rest. Stopping only to slip a mackintosh from a peg inside his house, Sherlock got into his car and drove to the Edicott’s farm.

He parked at the top of the hill, a twinging pang wracking him as he walked past the bare strip of land where his hives once sat.

Mud sucked at his feet as he entered the trees, raindrops dripping down through the thick canopy to spangle him in shining pearls.

Sherlock headed northeast, walking towards the back pasture where he knew Polk kept his hives. Finding it empty, Sherlock skirted the barbed wire fence, tall wet grass slicking itself to his boots, his eyes searching for any sign of the missing hives.

He found them on the leeward side of the barn, the boxes still intact and stacked in three untidy towers, 10-frames leaning against the wall, ivory comb still present on the wire netting.

Sherlock stood for a moment with his eyes closed before the evidence, breathing. Rain rolled off the lip of his hood and onto his cheeks, mimicking tears.

His knuckles ached for the rap of the front door beneath them. His chest tight with the anger he longed to unleash.

Idiot. Idiot. Blasted idiot. Polk obviously knew nothing about beekeeping or how to be a decent human being. Instead of alerting the community to his diseased hives as they had all be trained to do, he’d simply dismembered them, letting bees in his vicinity visit the exposed, infected comb and carry it back to their hives, dooming them in return. What kind of imbecile did it take to achieve such levels of careless destruction? Oliver Polk must be a living, breathing git of previously unseen magnitude. A certified wanker. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck.

Just then his mobile buzzed in his pocket, the screen lit up with a text from Ellen, who had seen his car parked on the hill, inviting him for tea and a game of Hearts. So instead of tearing Oliver Polk a new arsehole, Sherlock found himself at the Edicott kitchen table for the second time in so many days, a steaming mug of lapsang souchong in front of him, venting to Ellen, who nodded sympathetically as she played a game of solitaire across from him.

It took three custard creams and four chocolate bourbons before he had exhausted himself. He slouched in his seat, feeling emptied out, his fury leached away. Righteous indignation sat haughtily in its place.

Ellen looked up at him over the crimson rims of her reading glasses, one strawberry blonde eyebrow arched.

“Yes, I’m finished,” he said, picking up his gone-cold tea and taking a long drink.

“Did it help?” she asked, shuffling the deck.

Sherlock considered this for a minute, the knot of grief inside him unchanged. He shrugged and nodded at once. “A little.”

“Polk’s granddaughter’s in the hospital for leukaemia,” Ellen said evenly, the sharp sound of the cards snapping against each other filling the room. “Not that it excuses his actions necessarily, but the man might be a bit distracted at the moment. She’s seven.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sherlock said, squeezing his eyes shut. The world was a bloody mess. None of them made it out unscathed.

On the drive home Sherlock rolled down the window and let the scent of the rain soaked fields wash over him. He focused on the small gifts of the day: the way Mozart sung so brightly through his body, biscuits and tea with a friend, the fact that he hadn’t torn down a man who’s granddaughter was dying.

And, added to the list as he arrived home, a baggie full of soft American-style chocolate chip cookies, burned to black on the bottom, sitting atop his bag of sugar on his back porch, with a note that said, in neat script with a left-handed slant and using an egregious amount of exclamation points, which Sherlock found strangely endearing in this case instead of irrationally irritating as usual:  _Thank you! You saved my arse!_ _See you tomorrow!_


	12. Chapter Twelve

Sherlock lay beneath the pines and watched as the stiff spines of the needles spliced the sunlight into sizzling white slashes which struck across Sherlock’s eyes, making him see stars at the periphery.

Above, the clouds, snowy and plump, gathered in pillowed bunches, drifting in on a sea-blown breeze.

To his right, goldenrod, at the end of its tenure, its leaves singed black with mold and wisps of deep saffron-yellow petals clinging to the green stalks, rubbing like chalk dust between Sherlock’s fingers. It made fine honey, but there were no honey bees here, only a few fat bumblebees vibrating the flowers with their distinctive buzzing motion, making the plants shiver and bend.

To his left, the cliffs and the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. Sherlock could imagine the shingle beach, the roll and prick of the pebbles against the soles of his feet, the summer sun hot on his shoulders. The hissing foam of the water eddying around his ankles, the salt sting of the water enveloping him, his blood surging to the surface of his skin, his heart in his ears as he dove.

Now, the sun was aloof, a cold bright stone above. The ground beneath Sherlock with its piercing chill seeped through his shirt, the rich autumn scent of wet earth and leaf mulch filling his nose. The spring and summer was a flurry of activity for a beekeeper, the fall and winter a deep drowse. The Beekeeper’s Association meeting was coming up next week. Sherlock would talk to them about what to do about Oliver Polk. Sherlock didn’t like disturbing the man, but the hives would need to be burned. If they offered to take care of it for Polk, perhaps he would agree. It would also be an opportunity to speak with the others about starting nucs (nucleus hives) with local queens once spring arrived.

A book lay beside him, but the day was far too pleasant to read. After the toll the last few days had taken Sherlock was content to merely enjoy the calm. Last night he had prepared roast chicken and potatoes with rosemary and thyme. He had eaten it beneath a pink hibiscus sky at sunset and finished it off with a frosty glass of milk and John’s slightly charred chocolate chip cookies. He had gone in to bed with the last symphony of cricket song through his open windows and woken burrowed beneath his duvet in a delectable cocoon of cozy warmth that he had been loath to leave.

But leave he had and the morning had been filled with shutting down his alfalfa hives, who luckily hadn’t had much to report. One hive had swarmed, but left behind a strong enough colony that Sherlock thought they would winter fine so long as the wax moths or mice didn’t get to them. He’d taken a frame of honey from the neighbouring hive who could spare it and given it to the smaller one.Another had felt a little light when Sherlock hefted it, so he had covered the top bars in newspaper and sprinkled dry sugar over the top, spraying it with water to make it clump, and entice the bees to gather it. He’d also left a patty of pollen mixed with honey for them to nibble. He made a note to check on these hives in December. If necessary he would feed sugar syrup then, weather permitting. He didn’t like to open the hives during the winter if he didn’t have to, but on days when the temperature breached 10 degrees Celsius the bees would be active, removing their dead and making trips outside to defecate and clean the hive of debris. Sherlock would be able to minister them then without causing undue harm.

Once home and with a few hours to spare until the school bus deposited Charlotte home, Sherlock had packed a lunch of leftover chicken and a bunch of green grapes and set off along the cliffside path at the back of his property. Sherlock liked how isolated and quiet it was. The beach wasn’t overrun with tourists in the summer, owing to the fact that it was difficult to access, down a perilous track cut into the cliff face, and at the end of the year it was fairly deserted, aside from the occasional local out walking their dog.

He had sat at the cliff’s edge sucking salty grease and crackling from his fingers, enjoying the crisp breeze and the sour burst of flavour from the grapes, tart on his tongue. The water had been churned to white caps as the wind picked up and Sherlock had eventually moved inland to escape its buffeting force to lie amongst the scraggly pines. He dozed on the sun dappled bed of brown needles and his thoughts turned once more to the Watsons. A host of tragedy and trauma seemed to have chased them to Sussex. They intrigued him.

Divorce. Transition. Alzheimers.

You could read the worry it wrought in the lines on John’s face. The man must feel very much alone, Sherlock thought, remembering the way John had hung his head in his hands at Sherlock’s kitchen table. The faux sunniness of his profusion of exclamation points, which had seemed out of character, a false front for Charlotte perhaps? Sherlock could easily imagine the girl pestering her father to confirm the date for when she could see the bees again. Or perhaps it was just genuine, exhausted gratitude for the loan of Sherlock’s sugar, which must have felt something like grace on a night when the shops had closed and his daughter, new to school and uprooted from her old life, had dropped the information on him as a nasty, albeit innocent, surprise.

A text chimed then: _Charlotte’s having a quick snack. All right if we head over in a few?_

 _Sure_ , Sherlock typed, sitting up. _See you soon_.

Sliding his book into his satchel, Sherlock began the walk home. A hum of anticipation zinged through him, his steps quick. Eager, he observed. He hadn’t, he thought, felt this before. The way his heart thumped a bit harder, the way his cheeks felt tingly and warm, the way his mouth was curved up just the tiniest bit. He tucked it away for parsing later, instead giving in to the instinct to hurry along. He didn’t want to keep them waiting, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I come across beautiful pictures or interesting videos in my research. I'll try and share them here once in a while :)
> 
> The Queen  
> 


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